DENVER — The pain of this 3-2 shootout defeat on Thursday night to Colorado in a game the Rangers led 2-1 into the final minute of regulation wasn’t as severe as the pain experienced by Ryan McDonagh when he went down on Tuesday in Vancouver with a left shoulder injury, so there’s that for the Blueshirts.

And the loss wasn’t as significant as the loss of the club’s top player.

Indeed, the Blueshirts, who can clinch their eighth playoff berth in the last nine seasons by defeating the Senators at the Garden on Saturday, were proud of their resolve in getting the point against the fifth-overall Avalanche to complete their western trip at 2-1-1.

“I like the way we battled. I liked a lot of things,” said Henrik Lundqvist, who was outstanding under constant fire in the third period and who fell in the skills competition when Tyson Barrie scored in the first round and Semyon Varlamov blanked Mats Zuccarello, Marty St. Louis and Brad Richards.

“You try not to think too much about [the standings]. You [focus] on yourself and your own work.”

The Rangers were forced to work in their own end for almost the entire third period, outshot 16-3 while held without a shot from 2:51 to 17:12. The Blueshirts held on grimly, cobbling together myriad combinations both up front and on the back end, the former a function of offensive ineptitude and the latter a function of McDonagh’s absence.

Coach Alain Vigneault had the stalwart pair of Marc Staal (28:04) and Dan Girardi (27:21) on for a defensive zone draw with 59.3 seconds remaining. Though Derick Brassard won the faceoff, neither Staal nor Girardi could clear. That set it up for Barrie to score the tying goal with 51.4 seconds showing on the clock.

“I think I just had to go a little harder,” said Girardi, whose try off the wall was kept in at the left point. “We’re not satisfied with the one point. It’s not the way we wanted to finish.”

Though coach Alain Vigneault said following the morning skate that McDonagh’s status is “day-to-day,” it is surely going to be a number of days before the club’s best player is able to rejoin the lineup.

During the first intermission, McDonagh said that he is “pretty confident” he will be able to return for the playoffs that would begin on Apr. 16 or April 17, but added, “That’s my goal, at least.”

McDonagh, slammed into the rear wall from the blindside by Alexandre Burrows after first being hit from the other side by Zack Kassian with 43.8 seconds remaining in the Blueshirts’ 3-1 victory, said he does not have full range of motion in the shoulder.

“I’m a little restricted and there’s a little pain with that,” No. 27 said. “It’s a matter of getting back that full range of motion; without that, you can’t do anything on the ice.”

The defenseman said he was “relieved” the injury wasn’t worse.

“I was pretty concerned,” he said. “I’d never felt that kind of pain in my shoulder before. I was relieved there was nothing structural.”

McDonagh was noncommittal when asked what he thought of the hit. The NHL’s department of player safety reviewed the play but did not deem it worthy of supplemental discipline.

“It was a tough hit to take late in the game,” McDonagh said. “You never know what the true intent of a player is.”

The Rangers follow Saturday’s match with games at the Garden Tuesday against Carolina and Thursday against Buffalo before the season finale in Montreal on April 12. McDonagh wants to get back before the end of the regular season.

“I’m going to play as soon as I can, and as soon as I’m confident I can play the way I need to,” he said. “I don’t care whether we’ve clinched or not. Even for a few days when you’re off, the timing is going to be a lot different for the next stage we’re at, hopefully.”

First, though, the Rangers need to clinch. The first crack at it comes Saturday.